‘You gonna stay here with these people then you gotta get it right,’ Don Calligaris told me.
My head hurt. I had smoked too many cigarettes and drunk too much strong espresso. All these people ever seemed to do was smoke and drink, eat rich Italian food, pasta and meatballs and sauces made with red wine and sweet-tasting herbs. Seemed to me their food looked like the aftermath of a multiple homicide.
‘Five families, and it really ain’t no different from remembering all the players in a football team or somethin’.’ Don Calligaris went on. ‘Five and five only, and each of them have their names, their bosses, their underbosses, names that you need to know if you’re gonna mix with these people and have them take you seriously. You need to think Italian, you need to speak the language, you need to wear the right clothes and say the right words. You need to address people in the correct manner or they’re gonna think you’re some poor dumb fuck from the countryside.’
New York was cold. It was confusing. I had figured New York to be a single place, but it was made up of islands, each of them with different names, and where we were seated – in a small diner called Salvatore’s on the corner of Elizabeth and Hester in Little Italy – was a district on an island called Manhattan. The images, the names, the words that surrounded me were as new as the people who accompanied them: Bowery and the Lower East Side, Delancey Street and the Williamsburg Bridge, the East River and Wallabout Bay – places I had read about in my encyclopedias, places I had imagined so different from how they appeared in reality.
I believed Vegas to be the backstop of the world, the place where everything began and ended; New York disabused me of all I had believed. Compared to this Vegas was nothing more than its origin: a small jerkwater nothing of a place hunkering at the edge of the desert.
The sounds and images dwarfed me; they frightened me a little; they created a tension within that I had not experienced before. Crazy people wandered the streets asking for change. Men were dressed as women. The walls were painted with crude garish symbology, and every other word uttered was fucker or motherfucker or assfucker. The people were different, their clothes, their mannerisms, their bodies. People looked worn-out or beaten or bruised or swollen-headed from some late-night jag that had poisoned them with too much liquor or cocaine or marijuana. I had seen these things in Vegas, they were not new to me, but in New York everything seemed magnified and exaggerated, as if here everything was done twice as hard, twice as fast and for twice as long.
‘So there’s the Gambino family,’ Don Calligaris said, interrupting my thoughts. ‘Albert Anastasia was boss from ’51 to ’57. He started something you might hear of around here, a little club called Murder Incorporated. After Anastasia was killed the family was taken over by Carlo Gambino, and he’s been the boss since ’57. Then you have the Genovese, and these guys are Lucky Luciano’s family. After him came Frank Costello, and then Vito Genovese was boss until ’59. After Vito came a three-man council until 1972, and now the Genovese family is run by Frank Tieri. The third family, our family, is the Lucheses. Long history, lot o’ names, but all you gotta know is that Tony Corallo is the boss now. You’ll hear people refer to him as Tony Ducks.’ Calligaris laughed. ‘Gave him that name ’cause of all the times he ducked out from under the Feds and the cops and whoever the fuck else might have been after him. Then you got the Colombos, and they’re headed up by Thomas DiBella. Lastly you got the Bonanno family. They got Carmine Galante in charge, and if you ever meet him you don’t look him straight in the eye or he’ll have someone whack you just for the sheer fucking thrill of it.’
Calligaris drank some more coffee. He ground his cigarette out in the ashtray and lit another.
‘You got your New Jersey factions down here as well. Family has always been stronger in New York and Philly, but they got an established outfit in Newark, New Jersey, and the boss down there until ’57 was a guy called Filippo Amari. Nicky Delmore ran from ’57 to ’64, and now they got Samuel De Cavalcante-’
I was looking at Don Calligaris with a blank expression.
He started laughing again. ‘Hell, kid… think you better take a bundle of serviettes here and make some fuckin’ notes. You look like your face was a blackboard and someone just wiped you clean.’
Calligaris raised his hand and attracted the attention of the guy behind the diner counter. ‘More coffee,’ he said, and the guy nodded and hurried away.
‘Anyways, all you gotta remember is you’re here so’s we can use some of your special talents.’ Calligaris smiled broadly. ‘You got yourself somethin’ of a rep for the work you did for ol’ Giancarlo Ceriano, dumb fuck though he was.’
I looked up, raised my eyebrows.
‘Stupid fucker thinks he can rake off the cream from the milk and get away with it, you know?’
I shook my head.
Calligaris shook his head and sighed.
‘Don Ceriano-’ Calligaris crossed himself. ‘May he rest in peace… Don Ceriano, wise in the ways of the world he might have been, but he was given a specific instruction of how the Vegas business was supposed to be handled. He was only supposed to use certain men for certain things, he was supposed to pay over certain percentages to certain officials at certain times of the year. This is the way things work, and they’ve always been that way. Don Ceriano was an underboss for the Gambinos. Historically there’s always been a good relationship between the Gambinos and the Lucheses, and that’s why I was asked to go down and sort things out with Don Ceriano, make sure he understood who he was working for and why. Anyway, we sorted that little thing out, and now the Gambinos and the Lucheses have a part-share in the whole thing in Vegas, and it’s gonna get done right. You can’t run a business without a few dollars getting shared out between the right people at the right time, you know?’
Calligaris paused while the diner guy brought coffee for us both. He reached into his pocket and took out a twenty-dollar bill. ‘Hey kid,’ he said. ‘Buy your girl a necklace or something, eh?’
The kid took the twenty, stuffed it into the front pocket of his apron, and then he looked momentarily dejected and said, ‘Thanks, but I ain’t got a girl right now.’
Calligaris started to smile, and then he frowned. ‘What the fuck is this? What the fuck you bustin’ my balls about, you dumb schmuck? You want me to go out and get you a freakin’ girl or what? Get the fuck outta here!’
The kid stepped backwards, a flicker of fear in his eyes.
‘Hey!’ Calligaris snapped. ‘Gimme the fuckin’ twenty back, ya little fuck!’
The kid snatched the twenty-dollar bill from his apron pocket and threw it towards the table. Don Calligaris snatched it from the air, and then rose and started after the kid. He made to kick him and the kid started to run. I watched with amusement as the kid hurried down the length of the diner and disappeared through a door at the back.
Don Calligaris sat down. ‘Jesus Mary Mother of God, what the fuck is all this shit? Kid can’t even be grateful for a tip, has to get all smartmouth and wiseguy with me.’
He reached for his coffee, lit another cigarette.
‘Anyways, as I was saying, all you gotta do is keep your eyes open and your ears closed. You work for me now. You get an order to clip some fuck, then you go clip the fuck, right? Things is done right and clean and simple here… and none of that weird shit like what went down in New Orleans, okay?’
I tilted my head to the side.
‘That freaky shit with the heart, you know? Whatever the fuck his name was, Devo or something, right? Dvore, that was the fucker! That thing that you did when the guy’s heart was cut out.’
I shook my head. ‘I didn’t cut anybody’s heart out,’ I said.
‘Sure you did. You went down there and did some work for Feraud and his politician buddy. Cleaned up some shit a few years ago. Word got out that you whacked that Dvore fucker for some shit he was pulling and took his heart out.’
‘I never heard of anyone called Dvore, and I never cut anybody’s heart out. I did something for Feraud because Don Ceriano asked me to, but that was back in ’62, and I ain’t been down there since.’
Calligaris laughed. ‘Well, shit, kid… seems someone has been using your name to make a mark on the landscape. I got word that you whacked this guy Dvore for the Ferauds and this politician buddy of theirs, and just to make the fucking point you cut his heart out.’
I shook my head. ‘Not me, Don Calligaris, not me.’
Calligaris shrugged. ‘Aah what the hell… you should see the things they got my name down for. Never did any harm, helps to build your reputation, right?’
I listened to what Don Calligaris was saying, but my thoughts were back in Louisiana. From what I was being told it seemed that Feraud and his old-money buddy Ducane had taken care of some things and attributed them to me. That did not sit well. The feeling was as if someone was walking around in my skin.
‘So what the fuck, eh?’ Calligaris said, interrupting me. ‘You gotta do whatever the fuck you gotta do, and if there’s something to be gained by sayin’ it’s someone else then fair enough. Can’t say I haven’t done the same thing myself a couple or three times.’
Don Calligaris changed the subject. He spoke of people we would see, things he had to do. From what I could gather it appeared I would be with him all the time, that I was to take care of the business end of things as he dictated. He had his minders, his own consigliere, but when it came to dealing with something that required a more terminal remedy, then I was to be called upon. It would really be no different from my relationship with Don Ceriano, and though there were nearly fifteen years behind me, though Don Ceriano had been there through everything, it seemed I had disconnected from that life. Florida and Vegas, even Havana and all that had happened, were behind me. I let it go. There seemed no purpose to hold onto such things. Nevertheless, the fact that Antoine Feraud and his politician friend were down in Louisiana taking care of their business and attributing it to me concerned me greatly. At some point the matter would have to be addressed, and I imagined its remedy would be terminal.
Don Calligaris lived in a tall narrow house on Mulberry Street. Back a half block and over the street was a second house, a small place, and it was here that he brought me after we left the diner. He introduced me to two people, a young man called Joe Giacalone, the son of someone Don Calligaris referred to as ‘Tony Jacks’, and a second man, a little older.
‘Ten Cent Sammy,’ Don Calligaris said, ‘but people just call him Ten Cent. Comes from his calling card, see? Leaves a dime behind whenever someone gets clipped, like that was all their life was worth.’
Ten Cent rose from his chair in the small room at the front of the house. He was a big man, bigger than me by a head, and when he reached out his hand and shook mine I could feel sufficient tension in his grip to relieve my arm of its socket with one swift tug.
‘Joe’s just here hangin’ out,’ Ten Cent said. ‘He comes down here when his girl is bustin’ his balls, right Joey?’
‘Screw you, Ten Cent.’ Joe said. ‘I come down here to remind myself how fuckin’ smart I am in comparison to a dumb fuck like you.’
Ten Cent laughed and sat down again.
‘You’ll stay here with Ten Cent,’ Don Calligaris said. ‘He’ll give you the straight shoot on what goes down and when. Don’t deal with anyone but him an’ me, you understand?’
I nodded.
‘You got a room upstairs and Ten Cent will help bring your stuff in. Take a rest, have a siesta, eh? We got a party tonight at the Blue Flame and you can meet some of the guys. I gotta go take care of somethin’ but I’ll be around if you need me. Just tell Ten Cent, and if he can’t figure somethin’ out he can call me.’
Don Calligaris turned and gripped my shoulders. He pulled me close, and kissed my cheeks in turn. ‘Welcome, Ernesto Perez, and whether you whacked Ricki Dvore and cut his freakin’ heart out or not you still gonna come in useful up here in Manhattan. You enjoy yourself while you can, ’cause you never know what shit might be waitin’ for you around the corner, right Ten Cent?’
‘Right as fuckin’ rain, boss.’
Don Calligaris left, and for a minute I stood there in the front room of that house feeling like the world had closed a chapter on me and started another.
‘You gonna take a weight off or what?’ Joe Giacalone said.
I nodded and sat down.
‘Hey, don’t be so uptight, kid,’ Ten Cent said. ‘You got a new family now, and if there’s one thing about this family they sure as shit know how to take care of their own, right Joey?’
‘Sure as shit.’
I leaned back in the chair. Ten Cent offered me a cigarette and I lit it. Joey put the TV on, surfed channels until he found a game, and within a few minutes I had stopped questioning why I was there and what would happen. It was what it was. I had made my choice in a split second in Don Ceriano’s car. Ceriano was dead. I was not. That was the way of this world.
The Blue Flame was a strip joint and nightclub on Kenmare Street. First thing I was aware of was how dark it was inside. A wide stage ran the length of the building on the right hand side, and across this stage three or four girls in tasselled bras and panties no bigger than dental floss gyrated and ground their hips to a bass-heavy music that came from speakers along the floor beneath them. Over to the left three or four long tables had been pulled together, and seated around them were perhaps fifteen or twenty men, all of them dressed in suits and ties, all of them drinking and laughing, all of them red-faced and loud and trying to outdo one another.
Ten Cent took me down there. Don Calligaris rose as we approached and with a flourish of his hand he silenced the gathered crew.
‘Ladies, ladies, ladies… we have a new guy in town.’
The gathering cheered.
‘This is Ernesto Perez, one of Don Ceriano’s boys, and though Don Ceriano cannot be with us this evening of course, I’m sure he would appreciate the fact that one of his people got wised up and came to Manhattan to work for us.’
There was a round of applause. I smiled. I reached out and shook hands. I took a glass of beer that someone handed me. I felt good. I felt welcome.
‘Ernesto… shit, we gotta do something about your freakin’ name!’ Don Calligaris said. ‘Anyways, this is Matteo Rossi, and here we have Michael Luciano, no relation, and Joey Giacalone, you know, and this is his father Tony Jacks, and over there is Tony Provenzano, Tony Pro to you and me, and to his right you got Stefano Cagnotto, and next to him you got Angelo Cova, and the skinny fuck down the bottom is Don Alessandro’s kid, Giovanni. This crowd over here,’ he said, indicating the other side of the table. ‘Well, this sorry shower of saps and wasters is just some bunch of homeless fucks we picked up in the street.’
Don Calligaris laughed. He raised his hands and clenched his fists. ‘This is your family, legitimate in some cases, the rest of them a bunch of bastards!’
Calligaris sat down. He indicated a chair beside his and I took it. Someone passed me a bowl of bread slices, and before I knew it I was surrounded by plates of meatballs and salami, and other things I didn’t recognize.
They talked, these people, and their words were like one vast rush of noise in my ears. They spoke of ‘things’ they were taking care of, ‘things’ that needed taking care of, and at some point the girls were gone, the music went down low, and Tony Pro was leaning forward with everyone’s attention rapt and he was talking about someone I had heard of once before.
‘Cocksucker,’ he was saying. ‘Guy’s a freakin’ cocksucker. Hard bastard, I’ll give him that, but we don’t need him back now we got Fitzsimmons. Frank Fitzsimmons toes the line an awful lot more than Hoffa ever did, and seems to me we should keep it that way.’
Don Calligaris was shaking his head. ‘Sure, sure, sure, but what the fuck’re we gonna do, eh? Guy’s a name, a big fucking name. You can’t just whack someone like Jimmy Hoffa and expect to walk away with nothin’ more than dust on your shoes.’
‘Anyone can get whacked,’ Joey Giacalone said. ‘Kennedy said that… that anyone could whack the fucking president if he was determined enough.’
‘Sure, anyone can get whacked,’ Don Calligaris said, ‘but there’s whacking someone and whacking someone, and they ain’t necessarily the same fucking thing, are they?’
Another man further down the table, Stefano Cagnotto if I remember rightly, said, ‘So what’s the fucking difference… someone gets whacked, someone else gets whacked. You do it right, who gives a fuck who it is? It’s not who it is but how it’s done that matters.’
Tony Pro nodded his head. ‘He’s right, Fabio. It’s not who it is but who does it and how it’s done that matters… hey, Ernesto, whaddya reckon?’
I shook my head. ‘I don’t know who you’re talkin’ about,’ I said. I had heard the name Jimmy Hoffa before, but I was ignorant of his significance in this game.
Tony Pro laughed. ‘Hey, Fabio, where d’you get this kid? You go collect him from the farm?’
Calligaris laughed. He turned to me. ‘You heard of the Teamsters?’
I shook my head.
‘Labor organization sorta thing… unions and truckers and construction crews an’ all that sorta stuff. Hell, I heard the Teamsters even got a union for the hookers and the strippers.’
‘No shit?’ Tony Pro said. ‘Hell, ain’t we movin’ with the times.’
‘Anyways,’ Calligaris went on. ‘Teamsters, International Brotherhood of Teamsters, they’re a big fucking organization, handle all the unions and the pension funds and all manner of shit.’ He turned to his left. ‘Hey, Matteo, you deal with this thing enough, what’s the word on the Teamsters?’
Matteo Rossi cleared his throat. ‘Organizes the unorganized, makes workers’ voices heard in the corridors of power, negotiates contracts that make the American dream a reality for millions, protects workers’ health and safety, and fights to keep jobs in North America.’
There was a ripple of applause amongst the crowd.
‘Seems to me,’ Tony Pro said, ‘that someone should look out for Jimmy fuckin’ Hoffa’s health and fuckin’ safety.’
The crew laughed. They talked some more, and then there was more food coming and the music got louder, and a girl with breasts the size of basketballs came out and showed the family how she could make the tassels on her nipples spin in two different directions at the same time.
We ate, we drank, and the name of Jimmy Hoffa was not mentioned again that night. Had I been aware of what would happen I would have asked questions, but I was new, it was not my place, and I didn’t wish to alienate myself from these people before I even got to know them.
It was three days later that I saw her.
Her name was Angelina Maria Tiacoli.
I saw her in a fruit market on Mott Street, a block over from Mulberry. She had on a summer print dress, over it a camelcolored overcoat and in her hand she carried a brown paper grocery bag loaded with oranges and lemons.
Her hair was rich and dark, her complexion olive and smooth, and her eyes, hell, her eyes were the color of warm creamy coffee. I held my breath when she looked at me and I looked away quickly. Ten Cent was with me and he told her ‘Hi Angel’, and the girl smiled and blushed a little and mouthed ‘Hi’ back.
I watched her go, watched her intently, and Ten Cent nudged me and told me to put my eyes back in my head.
‘Who is she?’ I asked.
‘Angel,’ he said. ‘Angelina Tiacoli. Sweet girl, sad story.’
I looked at Ten Cent. He shook his head. ‘Don’t be getting any fucked-up ideas, ya Cuban fruitcake. She’s strictly out of bounds.’
‘Out of bounds?’
Ten Cent shook his head. ‘Jesus, you ain’t fuckin’ listenin’ to me… I say she’s no go then she’s no go, okay?’
‘Okay,’ I said, ‘but just tell me who she is.’
‘You remember the other night at the Blue Flame?’
I nodded.
‘Guy down at the end, guy called Giovanni Alessandro?’
I didn’t remember, but then there had been so many people, so many names.
‘His father is Don Alessandro. Big boss. No fucking about. Don Alessandro has a brother… well, he had a brother called Louis. Louis was a mad fuck, a real mad fuck at the best of times, little left of center if you know what I mean. Anyways, he was married to some girl, a good Italian girl, and he went out on her, you know?’
‘Went out?’ I asked.
‘Christ, kid, you really is from the farm, ain’tcha? He went out… you know, he went and fucked some other broad. You know what that means?’
‘Yes, I know what that means.’
‘Lord God, the kid’s a fucking genius! Anyways, Don Alessandro’s brother goes and fucks some other broad and this broad has a kid… and the kid is Angelina. Everyone knows she ain’t exactly blood, but hell she’s a good kid and she’s sure as hell pretty, so Don Alessandro keeps her here around the family.’
‘And her mother?’
‘That’s the sad part. Her mother was some hooker or stripper from someplace, crazy junkie bitch, and she and Don Alessandro’s brother got to fighting one night when Angelina was about eight or nine years old, and they ended up shooting each other.
Don Alessandro had already told his brother not to see her any more, that he would make sure everything was taken care of for the kid if he just promised to stop fucking the hooker, but Louis Alessandro was a crazy bastard, and he went on seeing this junkie bitch for years, and then all hell broke loose and this pair of fruitcakes ended up whacking each other, and Angelina ends up losing her father and her birth mother, and she ain’t got nothin’ left but her dad’s wife who ain’t her real mother, you follow me?’
‘Yes,’ I said.
‘Anyway, her father’s wife, the woman who shoulda been her mother but wasn’t, she don’t want anything to do with Angelina, and so she tells Don Alessandro that he better take care of the girl seein’ as how the girl is his niece, and she’s gonna go someplace upstate and start her life over again away from her dead husband’s crazy good-for-nothin’ family. So Don Alessandro gave her some money, and then he made sure Angelina was looked after until she was all growed up, and then he bought her a place. That’s where she lives now, all by herself.’
‘And how come she’s out of bounds?’ I asked.
‘Because it just ain’t done, you know? The girl’s mother wasn’t Italian, she wasn’t part of the family… the poor kid’s mother was some half-crazy fucked-up junkie bitch from no place special who put her pussy where it shouldn’t have been. Now get the fucking oranges would ya for Christ’s sake… what the fuck is this with the third fuckin’ degree anyway?’
I saw her again a week later. Same store. Was down there by myself collecting groceries for Ten Cent. I made a point of saying ‘Hi’ to her, and though she said nothing in response she did look at me for a heartbeat, and in that heartbeat there was the ghost of a smile, and in that smile I saw the promise of everything else that might lie behind it.
The day after I saw her in the street. She was leaving a hairstyling salon on Hester. She wore the same summer print dress and camel-colored overcoat. She carried her purse tight in both her hands as if afraid someone would snatch it from her. I approached her, and ten or twelve feet away I sensed that she was aware of my presence. I slowed down and stopped on the sidewalk. She slowed down also. She glanced to her right as if wondering whether to cross the street to avoid me, but she hesitated, hesitated long enough for me to raise my hand and smile at her.
She tried to smile back, but it was as if the muscles of her face were denying her the right. Her hands did not move; they clutched the purse tightly, as if the purse was the only thing she could be sure of in that moment.
‘Miss Tiacoli,’ I said quietly, because I knew her name from Ten Cent, and would not have forgotten that name even if forgetting had been a life-and-death matter.
She tried to smile again but could not. She opened her mouth as if she planned to say something, but not a word came forth. She looked to her right again, and then once back at me, and then she stepped suddenly from the sidewalk to the street and hurried across Hester.
I watched her go. I followed her a good fifteen yards on the other side of the road.
She stopped suddenly. She turned towards me. Cars went by unnoticed between us. She let go of the purse with her right hand and raised it, palm facing me as if to stop me coming any further, and then as quickly as she had stopped she started walking again, faster this time. I let her go. I wanted to follow her but I let her go. At the corner of Hester and Elizabeth she glanced back once, just for a split second, and then she turned and was gone.
I walked back to the house empty-handed. Ten Cent called me a ‘dumb fuckin’ Cuban’, and sent me out once again to get cigarettes.
In April of 1974 we moved house. Apparently where we were had been marked by the Feds and it was no longer safe. Don Calligaris stayed in his tall narrow house on Mulberry but me and Ten Cent went over Canal Street to Baxter on the edge of Chinatown. The house was bigger, I had three rooms to myself, my own bathroom, and a small kitchenette where I could cook the food I wanted when we weren’t eating together. I bought a record player and started listening to Louis Prima and Al Martino, and when Ten Cent was out of the house I would take a suit on a hanger from my wardrobe, hold it close like a partner, and pretend I was dancing with Angelina Maria Tiacoli. I had not seen her since that day on Hester when she came out of the salon, and most nights I thought of her, of how it would be to lie beside her in the cool half light of morning, the warmth of my body against hers, the words we would share, of how important everything would become if she were with me. I felt like a child with a schoolyard crush, and there was a passion and promise that lay within that feeling that were new to me.
In June me and Ten Cent had to go uptown to Tompkins Square Park and meet with a man called John Delancey. Delancey was a Clerk of the Court on the Fifth Circuit. He told us that there was a pending investigation coming to a head. The target was Don Fabio Calligaris and Tony Provenzano.
‘Tony Pro had someone killed,’ John Delancey told us. ‘I don’t know why, I don’t know what it was all about, but the guy was a cop’s brother. Cop’s name was Albert Young, a sergeant at the 11th Precinct. They cut his brother’s balls off and put them in his mouth for God’s sake, and the cop has been shouting long enough for someone to take notice.’
Ten Cent was nodding. He looked intent. ‘So how come this falls on Calligaris?’ he asked.
‘Because the Feds have been after Calligaris for years but they never got anything on him. Calligaris is hand-in-glove with Tony Ducks, and Tony Ducks is boss of the Luchese family, and if anything happens to Calligaris then the Feds reckon it will bring down the Lucheses. They wanna make it seem like the Lucheses welched on Tony Pro and start another faction war.’
Ten Cent laughed. ‘Shit, these people work for the government and they must be the dumbest motherfuckers ever to walk the face of the earth.’
‘Maybe so,’ Delancey said, ‘but they got wires and circumstantial evidence, fabricated or otherwise, that puts Calligaris in a room with Tony Pro saying as how they’re gonna whack the cop’s brother.’
‘That’s bullshit,’ Ten Cent said. He looked like he was going to get angry.
Delancey shrugged. ‘Just tellin’ ya how it is, Ten Cent. You gotta get Calligaris to sort out the cop, make him shut his mouth, and then you gotta plug the leak that’s inside your family.’
‘You gotta name?’
Delancey shook his head. ‘No, I don’t gotta name, Ten Cent, and if I did you’d have it, but all I know is that someone inside your camp, someone who comes close to Calligaris, has given the Feds what they need and they’re gonna use him as a witness.’
Later, after a fat brown envelope was passed discreetly from Ten Cent to Delancey, we walked back to the car.
‘Not a word of this to anyone,’ Ten Cent warned me.
‘A word of what?’ I asked.
Ten Cent winked and smiled. ‘That’s my man.’
Three nights later on a dark corner – East 12th near Stuyvesant Park – I picked up on Sergeant Albert Young of the 11th Precinct leaving a wine store and crossing the road to his car.
Four minutes later Sergeant Albert Young of the 11th Precinct – twice decorated for valor, three times commended by the Office of the Mayor for bravery above and beyond the call of duty, seven times recipient of a 118 citation for excessive force – was slumped in the driver’s seat with a.22 caliber hole back of his left ear. He wouldn’t shout about his brother any more. More likely than not he’d get to speak with him real soon in cop heaven.
Four days subsequent Don Calligaris came to our house and spoke with me and Ten Cent.
‘You guys gotta plug the leak,’ he said matter-of-factly. ‘We watched what happened after the cop got clipped, and we know who spent too much time away from home. We had him followed and he met some suits in Cooper Square up near the Village yesterday morning.’
Ten Cent leaned forward.
‘This name goes out of this room and there’s gonna be hell to pay. You gotta do it quick and quiet. Send Ernesto. He did good with the cop, very good indeed, and we need the same kind of thing here. We need it to look like he was into something bad so they don’t parade him round like some sort of martyr, okay?’
‘Who?’ Ten Cent said.
Calligaris shook his head and sighed. ‘Cagnotto… Stefano Cagnotto, the dumbass sorry excuse for a piece of motherfuckin’ shit.’
‘Aah fuck, I liked him,’ Ten Cent said.
‘Well, you ain’t gonna get to like him any more, Ten Cent. Asshole got himself picked up on a speeding ticket, they searched his car, found a bag of coke and a.38. He was looking at a year, two tops if he screwed up the trial, and he’s talking about turning States and walking if he gives up me and Tony Pro for the cop’s brother.’
Ten Cent turned and looked at me. ‘You remember him from the Blue Flame?’
‘No,’ I said, ‘but you can show me who he is… and he sure as hell is gonna remember me, right?’
Calligaris smiled. ‘You’re a good one, Ernesto, and it sure as shit is a shame you ain’t from back home otherwise you’d be getting yourself made before fuckin’ Christmas.’
Don Calligaris left then. Me and Ten Cent sat for a while in silence, and then he turned to me and said, ‘Sooner the better, kid. Let’s go check out where the motherfucker is and see how we’re gonna do this, okay?’
I nodded. I stood up. I asked if I had time to clean my shoes before we left.
That night, middle of a hot June in New York, I sat in the back room of Stefano Cagnotto’s overnight apartment in Cleveland Place. A block away was the Police Headquarters building. I appreciated the sense of irony. I had been waiting for the better part of two hours before I heard the sound of feet on the risers below. The tension felt good in my gut. I wanted to take a piss but it was too late to move.
The apartment was dark but for a thin film of light that seeped through the curtains to my right. In my hand I felt the weight of a silenced.38. I was dressed in a good five-hundred-dollar suit. I had on a white shirt and a knitted silk tie. Had you seen me at the Blue Flame with the Luchese crew you wouldn’t have thought twice. I was part of their family, Cuban blood regardless, I was part of the Lucheses, I was someone, and that someone felt good.
Stefano Cagnotto wasn’t drunk, but he carried a skinful, and when he came through the apartment door he fumbled and dropped his keys. He swore twice and searched around in the darkness to retrieve them. I heard the jangle of metal as he picked them up. He closed and deadbolted the door. That was instinct. In this business you always deadbolted even if you’d only come back ’cause you’d forgotten your pocketbook.
Once inside he flicked on the light. I heard him sit down. Heard his shoes scuttle along the floor as he kicked them off. He started singing to himself. ‘Fly me to the moon, and let me play among the stars…’
Anytime now, I thought. Anytime now, motherfucker, your wish is gonna come true.
I worked my feet around in circles until I heard the ankle bones pop. I eased myself forward in the chair and took the weight of my body in my knees and my feet. I rose carefully, soundlessly, and I took a step towards the front room. By the time I reached the doorway Cagnotto had walked out back to the kitchen. I heard the rush of the faucet.
I held my breath and waited for him to come back.
In his hand he held a glass. He saw me. He dropped the glass.
‘What the fu-’
I raised my hand.
‘Ernesto,’ he said. ‘Jesus fucking Christ, Ernesto, you gave me the scare of my fucking life! What the living fuck are you doing here?’
I brought my right hand out from my side.
Cagnotto’s eye fixed on the gun.
‘Aah Jesus Christ, Ernesto, what the fuck is this shit?’ He looked down at the ground. ‘Look what the fuck you made me do,’ he said, indicating the shattered glass at his feet. He stepped over the broken shards carefully and took a couple of steps into the room.
‘Put the fucking gun away Ernesto. You’re giving me the fucking creeps. What the fuck’re you doing here? What d’ya want this time of night?’
‘Sit down,’ I said quietly. My voice sounded gentle, almost sympathetic.
‘Sit down? I don’t wanna sit the fuck down.’
‘Sit down,’ I said again, and then I raised the gun and aimed it squarely at his gut.
‘You must be fucking kidding,’ he said. ‘Who the fuck put you up to this? Is this that fat fuck Ten Cent? Jesus, what the fuck does he think this is… April fucking Fools’ Day?’
I took a step forward and raised the gun so it leveled with Cagnotto’s eyes. ‘Sit down,’ I ordered.
‘You don’t come down here and tell me what the fuck to do, you guinea fuck… Who in fuck’s name d’you think you are?’
Cagnotto’s fists were clenched tight. He took another step forward and I went for him without a moment’s hesitation.
Thirty seconds later, no more, Stefano Cagnotto was seated on the edge of a two-thousand-dollar Italian leather sofa nursing a wide cut on the side of his head. He was still stunned, so whatever the hell came out of his mouth didn’t make a great deal of sense. He was a little incoherent, but he didn’t have any difficulty understanding what was going to happen when I placed a bag of coke on the glass table ahead of him and told him to get busy.
He knew he was going to go out one way or the other. He didn’t even protest, didn’t even try to defend his actions or himself. Came down to it he had some degree of honor, and there was something I could respect in that regardless of the situation.
Four lines and he was having a hard time concentrating on what he was doing. I set my gun aside and helped him a little, holding his head back while he pushed cocaine into his own nostrils. I opened his mouth and threw some in there myself, and when he started gagging I put my forearm against his chest and pushed him back against the sofa. He started puking then, and every time he retched I pushed his head down so he didn’t puke over me. I never did coke, never would, and I didn’t know how much these assholes would stick up their noses at a time. I had brought a bag with me that Ten Cent had gotten from somewhere, maybe a cupful all told, and by the time we were done more than half of it was down Cagnotto’s throat or up his nose.
I didn’t need to shoot the motherfucker. Had never intended to. He died after about ten minutes.
The Feds case never resurfaced. June closed up, as did July and August, and I never heard another word. Don Calligaris just told me Good job kid, and that was the end of that.
September I followed Angelina Maria Tiacoli three blocks before she realized I was behind her.
She looked mad. She turned on her heels and walked back towards me.
‘What are you doing?’ she snapped accusingly, but there was something heated and passionate in her voice that sounded a great deal more purposeful than just anger.
‘Following you,’ I told her.
‘I know you’re following me,’ she said. She took a step backwards and pulled her coat tight around her. This one was black, like a heavy woollen fabric, and on the edges it had a silk trim. ‘But what are you following me for?’
‘I wanted to speak with you,’ I said. I felt brave and bold, like the schoolyard boss.
‘About what?’
‘About whether I could take you to go see a movie or maybe have something to eat, or maybe just a cup of coffee in a diner or something.’
Angelina Maria Tiacoli looked dumbstruck. ‘You can’t ask me that,’ she said. ‘You understand that you can’t follow me down the street and ask me that.’
I frowned. ‘How come?’
‘Do you know who I am?’ she asked.
‘Angelina Maria Tiacoli,’ I replied.
‘Yes, that’s my name, but d’you know who my father was?’
I nodded. ‘Sure I do. Ten Cent told me.’
‘Ten Cent?’
‘He’s a guy, just a guy I know.’
‘And he told you all about me?’
‘No, not all about you. I’m sure he doesn’t know a great deal about you at all. He told me your name, who your father was, and the rest I figured out for myself.’
‘The rest? The rest of what?’
‘Aah, you know, like how pretty you are, and how you look like the sort of person it would be great to know, and how good you and me would look if we dressed up smart and went somewhere nice, like a restaurant or a show or something.’
‘And you figured that all out by yourself, did you?’
I nodded. ‘Sure I did.’
‘Well,’ she said, ‘I don’t know who you are, but if you have a friend called Ten Cent then I can only imagine what kind of people you might mix with, and if you mix with them then any one of them can very quickly tell you that I am not the sort of person that men in the family mix with, and I sure am not the kind of girl you take to a restaurant or out to a show.’
I shook my head. ‘Why, what’s wrong with you… you sick or something? You got like a terminal illness?’
Angelina Tiacoli looked like someone had slapped her face. ‘You are such a smart guy,’ she said, and she took a step towards me. ‘You talk to your stupid friends with their stupid names, and they tell you who I am, that I’m nothing but some hooker’s daughter, and maybe if you follow me down the street I might take you home and fuck you or something. Is that how it happened? Is that the kind of conversation you had back there with your family?’
I was stunned. I didn’t know what to say. I fought with the words in my head but I lost. I opened my mouth and nothing but silence came out.
‘Go back to wherever the hell you came from and tell your friends that if your goddamned family hadn’t cursed me to this life then I would have long since gone. You tell them that from me, and if you come down here again, or if you stop me in the street or follow me, then sure as hell I’ll get someone to clip you, you poor dumb stupid Italian thug.’
She glared at me.
I opened my mouth.
‘Not another word,’ she said, and then she turned and hurried away.
‘I… I’m not… I’m not Italian,’ I stammered, but the sound of my voice was lost in the clatter of her heels on the hot-top, and before I could say another word, before I could raise my head or get my brain in gear sufficiently to take a step after her, she had reached the corner of the street and turned.
Another thirty seconds and I snapped out of it. I went after her at a dead run, but even as I turned the corner I knew she would have disappeared.
I was right. She had vanished. Not a sound.
I stood there for some time with my heart in my mouth, and then I swallowed it with difficulty and started back home.
Christmas came and went. New Year also. I didn’t see Angelina save for a fleeting glimpse near the bus station as I drove past with Ten Cent and Don Calligaris. I couldn’t be sure it was her, but even seeing someone who might have been her was enough to make me realize how much I longed for her. All the time I had been in New York I had not slept with any girl – no hookers, no strippers, no-one – and I believed that back of my celibacy was the belief that I was saving myself for Angelina. I wanted to be with her. I wanted to hear that voice, once so filled with venom and anger; I wanted to hear that same voice as she spoke words of love and passion, and spoke them for me.
The spring unfolded. Winter lost its bitter grip on New York, and with the change of seasons came a change of temperament and mood in the Luchese camp. There was discussion once more of the Teamsters, of this man Hoffa whom I had heard mention of so many months before in the Blue Flame.
‘Has to go, has to fucking go,’ Don Calligaris said. ‘He’s a short fat fuck, a nothing, a piece of shit arrogant cocksucker. Just ’cause he was Teamsters’ president he thinks he owns the fucking country. They sent him down on this jury tampering and wire fraud bullshit but that asshole Nixon grants him clemency and we got him back like a fucking cancer. Jeez, why can’t he just leave the fucking thing alone? We’re doing fine with Frank Fitzsimmons, hell, he’s a pussycat compared to Hoffa. But no, Hoffa’s got to stick his nose in where it ain’t fucking wanted, and he’s giving everyone ball-ache by the truckload. We gotta do something about this motherfucker… gotta make him get the fuck outta here and not come back.’
July of 1975 there were meetings, long meetings. I saw people come and go through the house, Don Calligaris’s place also – people like Tony Provenzano and Anthony Giacalone. I learned that Tony Pro was the current vice-president of the Teamsters, and whenever he spoke of Jimmy Hoffa he spoke like he was talking about something he’d picked up on his shoe from the sidewalk.
‘Whenever we want Frank to look the other way we find he ain’t even on the same block, and that’s just the fucking way we want it,’ Tony Pro would say. ‘Nixon told Hoffa to stay out of the unions for ten years, that was part of the deal on this clemency thing. He comes back and we got the Feds breathing down our necks like you wouldn’t fucking believe. The guy… Jesus, we tell the guy time and time a-fucking-gain to keep his face out of the business, but this guy is so hard of fucking hearing I don’t think he got no fucking ears at all.’
July twenty-eighth, a Monday, and Don Calligaris called me over with Ten Cent. When I arrived at the Mulberry house the place seemed packed with people, some I knew, some I had never seen before. No names were given, but later Ten Cent told me that the guy sitting next to Joey Giacalone was Charles ‘Chuckie’ O’Brien, a very close friend of Jimmy Hoffa’s, someone Hoffa referred to as his ‘adopted son’.
‘We’re gonna kill this motherfucker,’ Joey Giacalone said. ‘Vote’s been taken and he’s been voted a dead fuckin’ loser. We all had enough of this ball-ache he’s been dishin’ out.’
A meeting had been arranged in Michigan, place called the Machus Red Fox Restaurant in Bloomfield Township. Hoffa was going to meet with Tony Provenzano, Tony Giacalone and a Detroit labor leader to discuss Hoffa’s intention to run for presidency of the Teamsters again. Hoffa wanted to know if the heavy-hitters would back him if he challenged Frank Fitzsimmons.
Tony Pro and Tony Jacks would never arrive. Tony Jacks would go to his usual appointment at the Southfield Athletic Club to work out, and Tony Pro would be over in Hoboken, New Jersey visiting local Teamsters’ offices. He would make sure he shook lots of hands and spoke to lots of people who wouldn’t forget him being there. The labor leader would be suitably delayed and would arrive at the Machus Red Fox sometime after three. Joey Giacalone had a maroon-colored Mercury he was going to lend to Chuckie O’Brien. Chuckie would arrive at the restaurant and tell Hoffa the meeting place had been changed. Hoffa would trust Chuckie without question. He would get in the car. He would leave his own Pontiac Grand Ville right there in the Machus Red Fox car lot. He would never get out of the Mercury alive.
There was another element that caught me off-guard.
‘You gotta understand that it also comes back to this thing with Feraud and his connection with Vegas and the Luchese family,’ Tony Pro said. ‘You wanna keep this going with New Orleans, and believe me there is a great deal more money to come out of there than is coming right now, then you gotta understand that we’re doing this not only because we wanna keep Frank Fitzsimmons as president of the Teamsters, but also to keep the south states happy. Who’s the guy we got down there?’
‘Ducane… Congressman Charles Ducane,’ Tony Jacks said.
‘Right, Ducane. He’s the lead figure down there right now, he’s the one who has the say on the Teamsters’ contributions, where the money goes, who gets what. Feraud has him in his pocket, and if we don’t keep Ducane happy by doing this then we stand a chance of losing all the southern states’ funding as well. These guys have got their fingers in everyone’s fucking pies, and if we upset them then there’s gonna be some bloodshed and warfare. This is a necessary thing for everyone concerned, and it cannot, it must not, go wrong.’
‘That’s why I want your blessing to send Ernesto,’ Don Calligaris said.
Tony Provenzano looked across at Calligaris and then at me. ‘Right… this is what we gotta talk about. This Ducane has one of his own people, some ex-military guy or something.’ He turned and looked at Joey Giacalone. ‘What the fuck was this guy’s name?’
‘McCahill, something-or-other McCahill.’
‘Right… so Ducane wanted to send this guy down here to do this thing with Hoffa, but we wanna use our own people.’
‘Definitely,’ Don Calligaris said. ‘This is family business and it stays within the family. Like I said, I wanna send Ernesto.’
Tony Pro raised his eyebrows. ‘How so?’
‘Ernesto is from New Orleans originally, he did some work for Feraud and Ducane through Don Ceriano back in the early ’60s. I wanna send him and then I want word to get back to Feraud that we used one of his own on this thing. This fixes any difficulty these boys might have with us not using this McCahill guy, right?’
Tony Provenzano nodded. ‘Makes sense to me. Ernesto?’
I nodded. I said nothing.
Tony Pro smiled. ‘He ever speak?’
Calligaris smiled. He put his hand on my shoulder and squeezed it. ‘Only when he has to, and only when it’s people he likes, right?’
I smiled.
‘Shit, I better do something nice for him then,’ Tony Pro said. ‘He ain’t the sort of guy I want disliking me.’
They laughed. I felt good inside. It was a feeling I was getting used to. I was someone. I mattered. I thought also of Feraud and Ducane, people whose names recurred time and again in my business dealings, people who seemed to have become more and more significant as time had passed. Where once I had believed this Charles Ducane a small and nervous man in the employ of Antoine Feraud, it now seemed that he had mastered his own territory. He had become someone, just as I had, but in a necessarily different way.
‘So this thing goes down on Wednesday,’ Tony Jacks said. ‘From now on it’s called Gemini. That’s all, just one word. I don’t wanna hear no names or dates or places. I just wanna hear one word when you guys refer to this thing, and that word is Gemini.’
‘What the fuck does that mean?’ Tony Pro asked.
‘It’s a fucking star sign, you dumbass motherfucker. It’s a fucking star sign, like a zodiac thing, and there’s a picture of a guy with two heads or some fucking thing. It’s just a fucking word, okay?’
‘So why that?’ Tony Pro asked.
‘’Cause I said so,’ Tony Jacks said, ‘And because Jimmy fucking Hoffa is a two-faced motherfucker who’s gonna lose them both come Wednesday.’
So I went to Michigan and I met with Jimmy Hoffa on a warm Wednesday afternoon in Bloomfield Township. He was a big guy. Big hands. Big voice. But he was nervous. I think he knew he was going to die. He got in the Mercury when Chuckie O’Brien turned up at the Machus Red Fox, and though I was sat in back he didn’t ask me who I was. He was talking too fast, asking why the meet had been changed, if Provenzano and Giacalone were already there, if Chuckie had heard any rumor about whether or not they would back him in his attempt to be Teamsters president again.
He kicked a lot when I put the wire around his neck from in back of the car. He kicked like Don Ceriano, but I felt nothing at all. Chuckie had to hold his arms in his lap, and it took some doing because he wasn’t no hundred-and-forty-pound sapling. Jimmy Hoffa had some fight in him, right until the end, and there was one fuck of a lot of blood. It was just a business thing this time, and there was very little to say about it. He had pissed my employers off something serious, and that was all there was to it. President of the Teamsters he might once have been, but the look in his eyes in the rearview, the look I saw as he choked up his last breath, was the very same as all of them. Didn’t matter whether they were the Pope or a labor leader or the second coming of Christ, when they saw the light behind their eyes going out they all looked like frightened schoolteachers.
Figured I might look like that one day, but I figured I would jump off that bridge when I got there.
A little more than twenty minutes later I stepped from the car with a bloody piano wire in my coat pocket. Jimmy Hoffa, sixty-two years old, was driven south to a family-owned fat rendering plant and he was blended into soap. I walked back towards the Red Fox. I caught a bus into Bloomfield. From there I took another bus to the train station. I arrived back in Manhattan on Thursday 31 July. Thirteen days later it was my thirty-seventh birthday. Don Fabio Calligaris and Tony Provenzano threw me a party at the Blue Flame, a party I will never forget.
It was Tony Giacalone who asked me, asked me what I wanted for my birthday, told me I could have anything I wanted in the world.
‘Your blessing,’ I told him. ‘The blessing of the family.’
‘Blessing for what, Ernesto?’
‘To marry a girl, Don Giacalone… that’s what I want for my birthday.’
‘Of course, of course… and who do you want to marry?’
‘Angelina Maria Tiacoli.’
They gave me the blessing, reservedly perhaps, but they gave it, and though it would be another four months before I saw her again it was on that day that my life changed irreversibly.
Later many other things would change also. In August Nixon would finally concede defeat and resign, taking with him the spider’s web of connections that ran throughout the families right across the United States. On 15 October the following year Carlo Gambino would die of a heart attack while watching a Yankees game on the TV in his Long Island summer home. He would be succeeded, not by Aniello Dellacroce as everyone believed would be the case, but by Paul Castellano, a man who built a replica of the White House on Todd Hill, Staten Island; a man who negotiated a truce with the Irish-New York Mafia and offered their leaders – Nicky Featherstone and Jimmy Coonan – permission to use the Gambino name in their dealings for a ten percent cut of all their earnings from Hell’s Kitchen on the West Side; a man who would ultimately contribute to the relinquishing of power the Italian crime families held in New York.
Carmine Persico would depose Thomas DiBella as head of the Colombo family in 1978; Carmine Galante would hold sway in the Bonanno family until 1979 when he was murdered at Joe and Mary’s Italian Restaurant in Brooklyn, and he was replaced by Caesar Bonaventre, the youngest ever capo, merely twenty-four years old. By then my time in New York would be coming to a close; by then I would have long-since graduated from the clip jobs and shootings where I had earned my reputation, and my apprenticeship would have ended.
I believed I came to New York to find something. What it was I was looking for I did not know then, and even now cannot be sure. What I found was something I could never have anticipated, and that is something I will share a little of with you now.
It was close to Thanksgiving, and though Thanksgiving was not a particularly significant event in the Italian calendar, it was nevertheless a reason to eat more, to drink more, have parties at the Blue Flame and make wisecracks about one another.
I borrowed Ten Cent’s car, took it to an autoshop and had them valet it. God almighty only knows what they found inside, but they were family people and wouldn’t have cared anyway. I parked the car a block from the house so Ten Cent wouldn’t forget he’d lent it to me and drive off someplace, and I walked home. I dressed nice, like for church or something, and I cleaned my shoes and knotted my tie. It was early evening, a Saturday, and by seven I was leaving again with a spring in my step and two thousand bucks in my pocket.
When she opened the door she was dressed in nothing but slippers and a housecoat. Her hair was tied back of her head like she’d been cleaning or something, and when she saw me standing there with a thousand-dollar suit and a thirty-five-dollar bouquet it was all she could do to keep her eyes in her head. I was not a spectacularly handsome man, I mean hell, I couldn’t have modeled for magazines or whatever, but I scrubbed up clean and you could have taken me anyplace and not felt ashamed.
‘Yes?’ she said.
‘There’s a show at the Metropolitan Opera,’ I said. ‘A music show.’ I handed her the flowers. She looked at them like I was handing her a bag with a dead rat inside. ‘Anyway, there’s a music show at the Metropolitan Opera-’
‘You said that already… you better hurry now or you’re gonna miss the start.’
I looked at her. ‘I worked hard to look this good, and you look good even in your housecoat and your slippers. You get happy just being mean to people, or is it because you’re sick in the mind or something?’
She laughed then, and the sound was like something better than anyone might ever hear at the Metro.
‘No, I’m sick in the mind, and I can’t help but be mean to people,’ she said. ‘Now go away with your stupid flowers and whatever. Go find some pretty blonde with legs to her neck and take her to the opera house.’
‘I came to take you.’
Angelina Maria Tiacoli looked aghast. ‘I seem to remember seeing you in the street. That was you, wasn’t it?’
‘On Hester Street when you came from the hairstyling salon.’
Angelina frowned, was momentarily taken aback. ‘What, you take notes or something?’
I shook my head. ‘No, I don’t take notes… I just have a knack for remembering important stuff.’
‘And where I get my hair done is important?’
‘No, not where you get your hair done… the fact that it was you was what was important.’
‘You’re serious, aren’t you?’
‘Serious enough to ask for Don Giacalone’s blessing, and for the blessing of the family.’
‘Blessing for what?’
‘To marry you, Angelina Maria Tiacoli… to marry you and make you my wife.’
‘To marry me and to make me your wife, is that so?’
‘Yes, that’s so.’
‘I see,’ she said. ‘And you know who I am?’
‘I know enough about you to want to take you out, and I don’t know enough about you to find you very interesting indeed.’
‘So I’m interesting, eh?’
‘Yes,’ I said. ‘Interesting and beautiful, and when you speak I can hear everything in your voice that makes me think I could love you for the rest of your life.’
‘Did you practise this before you came over, or did you get a Hollywood screenwriter to make this stuff up?’
I nodded my head. ‘You got me there. I got a Hollywood writer to put it all down on paper for me, and I told him if it didn’t work then I was gonna go over to his house and shoot him in the knee.’
She laughed again. I was getting through.
‘So you went and dressed up all smart and you bought some flowers and you came over here with no invitation to ask me if I would go to the Metropolitan Opera with you?’
‘I did.’
‘I can’t come.’
I frowned. ‘Why?’
‘Because I can’t go out with you, or anyone like you, so you’re gonna have to get over it real quick and find someone else to harass.’
Angelina Tiacoli smiled once more, but it wasn’t a warm or well-meaning smile, and then she closed the door hard and fast and left me standing on the stoop.
I waited for thirty seconds or so until I heard her footsteps disappear inside, and then I stepped back, laid the bouquet against the door and drove home.
I went back the following afternoon after lunch.
‘You’re back again?’
‘Yes.’
‘You’re not gonna give up, are you?’
I shook my head.
‘How was the music show?’
‘I didn’t go.’
‘You want me to pay for the tickets, is that it?’
‘No, I don’t want you to pay for the tickets.’
‘So what do you want?’
‘I want to take you out someplace nice, maybe see a movie-’
‘Or a show at the Metro.’
‘Right,’ I said, ‘a show at the Metro, or maybe just have a cup of coffee someplace and talk for a while.’
‘Just a cup of coffee.’
‘Sure, if that’s what you want.’
‘No, it’s not what I want, but I’m thinking if I go for a cup of coffee with you then you might leave me alone. Is that hoping too much?’
‘Yes, that’s hoping too much. If you come for a cup of coffee with me then I’m gonna want to come back and go someplace else next time.’
Angelina said nothing for a moment, and then she nodded. ‘Okay,’ she said. ‘Come back at four.’
She closed the door.
I went back at four. I beat on the door until someone in the adjacent house leaned out of the window and told me to shut the fuck up, asshole.
Angelina was either out, or she was hiding inside.
I wasn’t mad, not then, not ever; I was just determined.
I left it ’til Tuesday evening, a little after seven and I called at her house again.
She came to the door. She was dressed smart, a skirt, a woollen jacket, a pretty pink blouse that made her complexion warm and inviting.
‘I was ready last night and you didn’t come,’ she said.
‘I didn’t say I would come last night.’
‘You’re right, you didn’t, but seeing as how you came the day before and the day before that I figured you were gonna come every day until I gave in.’
‘If you’d said you were gonna be ready last night I would have come last night. You just shut the door on me and then when I came back on Sunday you weren’t here.’
‘I was here, I just didn’t come to the door.’
‘How come?’
‘I wanted to see how persistent you were.’
‘And?’
‘And you’re very persistent, though I’m still surprised you didn’t come yesterday.’
‘I’m sorry.’
‘Apology accepted,’ she said. ‘So where you gonna take me?’
‘Where d’you wanna go?’
‘Up to Avenue of the Americas on the subway, and find the most expensive restaurant and eat stuff I’ve never eaten before.’
‘We can do that.’
She paused for a moment as if contemplating something, and then she nodded. ‘Okay, give me five minutes and I’ll be down.’
‘You’re not gonna shut the door and then go hide inside the house?’
She laughed. ‘No… give me five minutes.’
I gave her five minutes. She didn’t come down. She left me standing there a further two minutes and then I heard her footsteps behind the door.
She opened up and came out. She looked great; she smelled great, something like violets or honeysuckles or something, and when I gave her my arm she took it and I walked her to the car. I opened the door for her and drove her to the subway station. I didn’t ask her why she didn’t want to drive. She wanted the subway, she got the subway. Had she asked me to buy the subway for her I would have found a way.
I took her to the Avenue of the Americas. We found a restaurant, and whether it was the most expensive one on the Avenue I don’t know, didn’t care, but I spent two hundred and eleven dollars on dinner and left a fifty-dollar tip.
I didn’t drive her back from the subway station to the house when we returned. I wanted to spend as much time with her as I could. I walked with her, it took a good twenty minutes, and when I stood on the stoop and told her I’d had the greatest night of my life she reached out and touched my face.
She did not kiss me, but that was okay. She did say I could call on her again, and I said I would.
I saw her most every day, except for those few days I was out of town on business, for the better part of eight months. In July of 1976 I asked her to marry me.
‘You want me to marry you?’ she asked.
I nodded. My throat was tight. I found it hard to breathe. The girl did the same thing to me as Ten Cent would do to someone who welched on a payback.
‘And why d’you wanna marry me?’
‘Because I love you,’ I said, and I meant it.
‘You love me?’
I nodded. ‘I do.’
‘And you understand that if I say no then you can’t ever come round here again. That’s the way it goes in this business… you ask a girl to marry you and she says no, then that’s the end of the matter. You know that right then it’s dead and gone to Hell. You understand that, Ernesto Perez?’
‘I understand that.’
‘So ask me properly.’
I frowned. ‘Whaddya mean, ask you properly? I just did ask you properly. I gotta ring here in my jacket pocket and everything.’
Angelina turned her mouth down at the edges and nodded her head approvingly. ‘You gotta ring?’
‘Sure. You didn’t think I’d come down here and ask you to marry me if I didn’t have a ring?’
‘Let me see it.’
‘Eh?’
‘Let me see the ring you brought.’
‘You’re serious?’ I asked.
She nodded. ‘Sure I’m serious.’
I shook my head. This wasn’t going according to plan; this was getting an awful lot more awkward and complicated than I’d imagined. I reached into my jacket pocket and took out the ring. It was in a small black velvet box.
I handed it to Angelina.
She took it, opened it, removed the ring and held it up to the light. ‘Real diamonds?’ she asked.
I scowled. Now I was beginning to get pissed. ‘Sure it’s real diamonds. You think I’d bring something to get engaged that was some cheap piece of shit-’
‘Language, Ernesto.’
I nodded. ‘Sorry.’
‘And it’s legit?’
‘Angelina, for Christ’s sake-’
‘I gotta ask, right? I gotta ask. I’ve been living around people like you all my life. Don’t think there can be more than three or four things given to me in my life that weren’t stolen. Getting engaged is important, getting married even more so, and I wouldn’t wanna be making any vows to God and the Virgin Mary on something that was stolen from some poor widow down on 9th Street-’
‘Angelina, for fuck’s sake-’
‘Language-’
‘Screw the fucking language. Give me the fucking ring back. I’m going home. I’m gonna come back tomorrow when you’re a little less crazy.’
Angelina held the ring in her hand. She closed her fist around it. ‘But I thought you came down here to ask me to marry you?’
‘I did. I came down here to ask you to marry me, but you’re just standing there busting my goddamned balls for no reason.’
‘So do it properly,’ she said.
‘I just did for Christ’s sake!’
‘Down on one knee, Ernesto Perez… down on one knee and ask me properly with no cursing or taking the Lord’s name in vain.’
I sighed. I shook my head. I kneeled down on the stoop and looked up at her. I opened my mouth to speak.
‘Yes,’ she said, before I had a chance to say a word.
‘Yes what?’
‘Yes, Ernesto Perez… I will marry you.’
‘But I haven’t even asked you yet!’ I said.
‘But I knew you were gonna ask me and I didn’t want to waste any more time.’
‘Aah Jesus, Angelina-’
‘Enough cursing Ernesto, enough cursing.’
‘Okay, okay… enough already.’
In November I suggested we get married in January of the following year. She put it off until May as she wanted to be married outside.
Three hundred people came to the party. It went on for two days. We took a honeymoon in California. We went to Disneyland. I did not have to learn to love her. I had loved her from a distance for a very long time. She was everything to me, and she knew it. Apart from the children she was the most important thing in my life. She made me important, that was how I felt, and that was a feeling I never believed possible.
In July of ’76 I had heard of Castro, how he had declared himself Head of State, President of the Council of State, also of the Council of Ministers. Word of him came from TV reports regarding the Senate Select Committee in Intelligence under Senator Frank Church and their investigations and inquiries regarding the alleged CIA involvement in the attempted assassination of Castro. It made me think of Cuba, of Havana, of my mother and father and all that had gone before. Of these things I said nothing to Angel, for that was what I called her, and that’s what she was.
In a way she was my salvation, and in some way my undoing, and but for the children there would have been nothing to show for any of it. But those things were later, so much later, and now is not the time to talk about such things.
By the time we talked about leaving New York I was forty-three years old. A second-rate B-movie actor had become president of the United States, and Angel Perez was pregnant. She did not want our children to grow up in New York, and with the family’s blessing we thought of moving to California, where the sun shone twenty-three hours of the day, three hundred and sixty-three days of the year. I cannot say that we existed together in a halcyon haze of contentment; I do not believe such a thing would be possible for a man with work such as mine, but the images and memories of my parents’ relationship were so far removed from what Angel and I had created that I was happy.
I did not believe, not for a heartbeat, that anything would go wrong, but then – in hindsight – I can honestly say that I was not a man who lived my life on the basis of belief.
New York became a closed chapter. We flew out in March of 1982, Angel was six months pregnant, and though it would be another fifteen years before I returned to New York I would never again look at that city with the same eyes.
The world changed, I changed with it, and if there was one thing I had learned it was that you could never go back.